Challenges as Opportunity: Data-driven Ad Strategy

Everyone uses research data to drive their advertising strategy, so there's nothing new here, right?

That depends.

Too frequently, smaller non-profits are people, time and cash strapped and don't think about how to use data available to them to drive an advertising strategy.  (Don't panic about not having an advertising strategy or budget - read how to develop a donated media strategy here.)

Often, market research about a particular issue and the community most affected by it is in the public domain. When your non-profit mission and constituencies align with those of the research study, making use of this public resource is better than using no data at all. What happens if it doesn't align enough for meaningful takeaways? A non-profit with little to no advertising budget may not have the resources available to conduct market research of their own, though resources like Taproot Foundation can help small non-profits get pro-bono services.

OK, once you have data relevant to your mission and constituency, what do you do with it?

Spot the challenges, seize the opportunity. In my last role, research conducted on familiarity, favorability, willingness to donate, probability of fundraising and attending an event showed what one would expect from respondents. Those that identified as personally affected by the issue were more likely to donate, fundraise and attend events. No big surprises there. Women, specifically mothers, were most likely to engage in supporting activity. Another no-brainer, but a challenge - where were the men, the dads? And then the opportunity showed itself: men indicated, in a much higher proportion to the female respondents, that they would be more likely to attend events than donate, and more likely to fundraise than to attend events. This allowed us to focus creative on men in context of the mission (fathers, grandfathers, etc) and the message on fundraising for events. 

This subtle change affected outcomes when measured several years later: men, while less likely to identify themselves as "active," were equally effective fundraisers to their female counterparts.

Interestingly, in the respondents not personally affected, both men and women indicated they were more likely to donate than to fundraise or attend an event. This group was obviously less enthusiastic about any supporting activity. General issue advertising was less gender-specific in focus, and more focused on the affected constituency.

Age is important. Life stage is an important factor when determining message and content. Our research consistently showed younger grandparents as (55 - 65) as more likely to donate than any other activity. Although our primary constituency was young parents, we were able to tailor donate messaging to the grandparent group. (This data is consistent with non-profit sector findings - https://www.motifinvesting.com/blog/who-gives-the-most-charity - and helpful when developing creative and messaging to target specific groups in your constituency.)

Don't overlook geography. I had worked for a national non-profit that held fundraising events all across the country. Our headquarters was in New York so the density of people familiar with the charity was predominantly East Coast - Mid Atlantic. The challenge was to increase familiarity in areas of the country that we had a presence and significant fundraising events. We were able to develop a strategy in those specific areas to increase awareness of the issue and the charity ahead of advertising the events - driving more attendance as a result of greater familiarity with the charity and its mission.

Sometimes, the data itself is the challenge - it is only a measurement of a small subset of the population, so it is not absolute. Understanding the fine line between using data to guide and shape strategy and allowing the data to rule the decision-making is key.